Venus approaches inferior conjunction

This short movie shows the change in appearance of Venus over the last three weeks. We are now less than two weeks away from inferior conjunction and I'll try to keep the movie updated if I get clear evenings. All these clips are at the same scale. The movie was shot using a Celestron 6 and a Canon 550 DSLR operating in centre crop 640x480 video mode at 50 fps.

Yesterday 15th March a clear sky after a very warm afternoon enabled a further viewing of Venus . Several images were made the attached being at 18.12 GMT. The equipment used was my C8 ( circa 1985) on a Super Polaris mount and eyepiece projection using a 20 mm Plossl. Sony 65a SLT exposure 1/30sec. Polar alingment was done by projecting the Sun's noonday shadow and drawing a chalk reference line.

Nice image. It really is great fun following Venus at this point in its orbit. From our latitude Venus is almost directly above the Sun at sunset now so the horns of the crescent are pointing upwards. Your image is also a great demonstration of atmospheric dispersion with blue light being refracted upwards more than red. I'm hoping we'll get some more clear opportunities over the next few days.

Venus is now a very thin crescent only 11 degrees from the Sun. It reaches its closest angular distance on Saturday when it will be 8 degrees away. This is a video from this afternoon in windy conditions. Don't try this unless you really know what you are doing. Pointing a telescope anywhere near the Sun can be very dangerous. The picture is a single still from the video. At some point I need to put this through Registax.

The video was shot with a Canon 550D in 640x480 centre crop video mode using a Celestron 6 with a x2 Barlow.

Nick, Managed to get this image just after conjunction. Took me ages as I was struggling with cirrus, terrible seeing and gusts of wind. It's not great but I'm amazed it's as good as it is considering the conditions.

Hi,A group of us using Andrew Robertson's Mak-Cass telescope observed Venus at around 15.45hrs yesterday afternoon during an astro camp at Haw Wood farm in Suffolk. Venus was at Inferior Conjunction at the time and I was really suprised how easy it was to see in the telescope set again the pale blue sky.This was a first for me and something I will remember ...thanks Andrew.

Glad you saw it visually Peter. This IC is relatively easy at 8 deg elongation. I have seen Venus at previous conjunctions when the elongation was only 5 deg. You need to be really careful and have a very clear sky. In fact, I also remember trying to see a comet very close to the Sun using one of Denis' telescopes. We were very careful and one advantage of a dome is that we could block out the Sun so that there was no chance of getting it in the telescope. There is a picture of me doing that somewhere but it is probably best not published for health and safety reasons.